


Consign to Oblivion

by dreabean



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, M/M, Memory Loss, Multi, Rituals, because magic that's why - Freeform, smiting, threesome implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 14:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1782148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreabean/pseuds/dreabean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I would do whatever it took to make sure you were safe, Anders,” she promises.  “Now come,” she adds stridently, trying to find her rhythm again.  “Merrill awaits and Fenris will be rather cross with me should I make him wait for us in her home.”</p>
<p>That draws a smile, making Anders look like he did when she first met him before Karl and before the Deep Roads.  “Maker forbid,” he agrees, and reaches out to take her hand.</p>
<p>(The one where Anders realizes that he done fucked up and asks Hawke for the help he needs before he can doing anything stupid.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consign to Oblivion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kit Chanterell (doctorprilicla)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorprilicla/gifts).



> I'm not sure where this came from but I dedicate it to Lutra, who gets more Anders feels than I do.
> 
> Some angst, warning.

*

“Anders... whatever it is that you’ve done, we can fix it. There’s still time,” she whispered, fingers digging too tight into his wrists. It’s a plea, she’s begging him, and he catches her hands in their steady sure grip. The same grip that held her when her mother died, when Bartrand locked them in the Deep Roads. The same hands that offered nothing but comfort when Fenris ran out on her and vanished for three years with Isabela. 

“Yes,” he murmured, eyes far away and locked somewhere over her shoulder. “Maybe you’re right... there’s still time to...” 

The grip on her hands became punishing, burning with icy cold. “No!” Justice snarls, dragging her into his face to glare at her with fractured glowing eyes. “You will not interfere in this!”

Hawke’s lip curls up and she growls, the sound echoed by Artorias, her Mabari Hound. “I will do as I damn well please,” she says. “Let me go!”

But Justice only tightens his grip, yanking so they’re almost nose to nose. “You will not ruin this,” he commands her but Hawke has had enough.

“I said...” she snarls, “let... me... go!” When the Smite hits him, Justice stumbles back, hands torn away from his wrists at the force of her power. He whirls to his feet, the wicked curve of his bladed staff swinging up, only to be countered by her broadsword. “Do not think for one minute that I will not strike you where you stand,” she says, her voice terrifyingly even. “Anders is my friend but I will not hesitate to free him from your poisonous influence.”

When the blue light intensifies, Hawke releases another Smite, the anti-magic running down her Templar’s blade to slam into Anders light-broken chest. The fade in his skin flickers and dies and Anders stumbles backwards, one hand pressed to his temple. “You... you used Smite on me?” he gasps, looking horribly betrayed. “Why!?”

Hawke slowly lowers her blade, letting it hang point down towards the dirty floor. “You don’t remember?” she asks, concern growing by leaps and bounds. 

“No... I... I’ve been losing time,” he breathes miserably, sinking slowly to the floor. Hawke reaches his side just as his knees give out and she catches him before he can do himself harm. “It’s getting worse,” Anders confesses, forehead pressed hard into her shoulder pauldron. “I no longer know where Justice ends... and I begin.”

Her lips brush his messy and limp hair when she asks quietly, “is he listening?”

Anders pauses for a long second as he searches himself. “No... I think you knocked him out.”

“Good,” she says bluntly. “We need to do something Anders. He’s not a spirit anymore, he’s a demon and you know it. Whatever it is I helped him do, and please don’t tell me, we need to stop it.”

He presses himself harder into her side, ignoring the uncomfortable braces and pieces of armor. “I know,” he says, tears standing out in his reassuringly amber eyes. “I _know._ But what can we do?”

Hawke chews on her lip in thought. “Do you remember Feynriel?”

Anders snorts wetly, turning his head to eye her in faint amusement. “You mean the mage you sent back to the circle even though he didn’t want to go?”

“Yes, him,” Hawke responds, not rising to his tone. “Marethari used a ritual to send me into the Fade to pull him out. And my cousin, the Warden Commander, she used a similar ritual to free a boy from the clutches of a desire demon.”

She feels him twitch against her, like he wants to look up at her but she tightens her grip in comfort. “You think you can separate me from him?”

Hawke tilts her head down to press a kiss to the crown of his head. “I want to try.”

They kneel there for long stiff moments before Anders nods against her damp neck. “Alright. Yes.”

Hawke lifts him to his feet, wrapping her arms around him tightly. “I’ll go right now, I mean it. Right now.” 

Anders yanks her back before she can get farther than a few feet from him. “Wait! Let me go with you. I don’t know how long your Smite will keep Justice down and if you... take a long time, or Marithari refuses, he may wake up.” An uneasy look flashes over his face for a moment. “He may know what you’re planning.”

She gazes at him for a long moment. “Alright,” she says softly. “Artorias,” she barks, spinning to face her bored Mabari. “Get Fenris, I don’t care what he’s doing or how busy he is, I need him.” The dog immediately turns and heads for the doors leading out of the Darktown home, waiting patiently for someone to open the door for him. “And meet us at Merrill’s in the Alienage,” she adds, just before he takes off at a sprint.

Hawke turns and reaches for Anders, swinging her large sword back up over her shoulder and sheathing it. “Hawke– Minna.” 

Pausing mid motion, Hawke raises one eyebrow at the use of her given name. Most of her friends didn’t use it, Aveline being the only exception, and Fenris when the mood strikes him. “Anders?” she prompts in the same tone, lowering her arm slowly.

“If I... If _he_ takes over. Would you kill... whatever was left?” Anders looks so small in his strange black feathery pauldrons, hunching his shoulders and so grey in the face he looks sick. 

She can feel her eyes sting with unshed tears. “I would do whatever it took to make sure you were safe, Anders,” she promises. “Now come,” she adds stridently, trying to find her rhythm again. “Merrill awaits and Fenris will be rather cross with me should I make him wait for us in her home.”

That draws a smile, making Anders look like he did when she first met him before Karl and before the Deep Roads. “Maker forbid,” he agrees, and reaches out to take her hand.

They lock up the doors together and head quickly for Lowtown, though not so quickly as to garner a cutpurse’s attention. 

Merrill is outside her small home when they arrive, and she takes one look at them and seems to understand what they’re there for. “Oh,” she trills. “Oh, Anders. I am so sorry.” She immediately goes into his arms, trapping Hawke as well.

“Well,” an amused and familiar voice says from behind them. “This was not what I expected to see when your hound roused me from my rest.”

Hawke pushes at Merrill ineffectually. “I wasn’t expecting this either to be honest, Merrill seriously, I can’t breathe and that’s saying something. And Anders’ staff is digging into me in very, _very_ strange places.”

Merrill springs away immediately and Anders stumbles heavily into Hawke’s side. “Ow,” he says faintly. She turns her eyes to him with a question and he shakes his head. “Not yet.”

She nods once. “Good. Let’s go, I’ll explain on the way.”

“Where are we going?” Fenris asks Merrill quietly when Hawke takes the lead, still holding onto Anders hand. 

“Sundermount,” she whispers. “I think... I think we’re getting rid of Justice.”

*

At the foot of the Mountain, Anders suddenly makes a choked noise and he stumbles, the Fade in him causing the air to pucker around him. “Hawke,” Fenris warns, already reaching for his Sword of Mercy, but Hawke simply knocks Anders down and slams him with a Smite.

Merrill dives behind Fenris to avoid the blast, being careful not to touch him. “Wh-what are you doing?” 

Anders stumbles to his feet, holding his head with both hands. “The Smites knock him out for a short while, long enough for Minna to recharge, and so we can... get this over with.”

“What is the plan, Hawke?” Fenris asks, and if he puts a little more emphasize on her last name than strictly necessary, no one mentions it.

“You both remember Feynriel?” she asks, and both Merrill and Fenris wince. Merrill had been angry that the desire demon had so easily fooled her, and Fenris had never quite forgiven himself for even listening to the one of Pride. Only Anders, though at the time he was Justice, had stood by her for the final battle with the demon of sloth. “Marethari has a ritual, the same ritual she used to send us to the Fade in order to wake Feynriel up. We’re going into the Fade around Anders and getting rid of Justice that way.”

Merrill, still peeking out from behind Fenris, looks intrigued. “That’s a really good idea, Hawke.”

Hawke smiles at her brightly, stepping into Fenris’ space for a breath of a second to pull the Dalish elf away. “Thank you, Merrill. I appreciate that.” Her smile turns into a smirk when Fenris’ breath audibly catches at her nearness.

They make it the edge of the Dalish camp before Hawke has to Smite Anders again. The mage whimpers this time, as his magic leaves him, and Hawke flinches when she hears it. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs as she helps him to his feet.

“It’s alright,” he rasps, looking worse every moment. “It is, Minna, I promise. This is... necessary.” His amber eyes are dim though, and Hawke just knows he’s thinking of his time in Kinloch Hold and how the Templar’s so abused their powers there. 

Marethari meets them at the first aravel before they can even get into the majority of the camp. “I felt your approach,” she says placidly. “You are here because of the demon of Vengeance in his heart,” she adds, looking into Anders’ face. “Are you certain this is how you wish to do this, child?”

Anders meets her eyes for a long moment that has Hawke’s skin itching with nerves. “Yes,” he says, obviously seeing something in the Keeper’s face. “I am certain.”

“You understand the dangers?” she asks, in the same placid tone.

“I do,” he murmurs, swaying on the spot. Hawke places herself behind him, letting him lean on her. 

Marethari nods once. “Then I wish you luck in the Fade, for I do not know what you will find. Make any preparations, if you do not return from this, you will want to have said your goodbyes.” The keeper turns to Merrill. “Will you aid me?”

Merrill nods enthusiastically, giving Anders a quick hug on the way into the heart of the camp. “See you in a moment,” she trills, managing to smile.

Down to Fenris, Anders and herself, Hawke has no idea what to say. She’s still steadying Anders and she shoots Fenris a covert look from through her shorn black hair. He’s gazing out into the wilderness, seemingly not paying them any mind. 

She knows that her closeness with Anders has to make him uncomfortable but they’re not so new that he feels the jealousy associated with their positions. Still, as though sensing her eyes on him, he turns to face her with one dark eyebrow raised.

It’s easy enough to get her meaning across, that Anders is uncomfortable and hurting and she has to do this for him because what else can she do, and Fenris blinks with understanding. There are no similarities in Anders and Fenris’ pasts but Fenris can almost understand not being in control of ones actions and wishing for a better end.

He strides forward, sliding his fingers across Hawke’s cheek and pressing a quick kiss on the top of her head. “I will see if they require aid. Do not be too long,” he cautions, less out of spite and more out of concern for the pinched skin around Minna’s mouth.

Once he’s mostly out of earshot, Hawke lowers them both to the ground, ignoring how her sword digs into the dirt behind her. “You alright?” she asks, pressing her forehead to the back of his head, the lump of his hair a reassuring pressure against her temple. 

“No,” Anders says bluntly. “I’m relying on a blood mage, an elf who hates mages and...” he stops short, tensing tightly in her arms. 

“And?” she prompts him, trying to be gentle. Anders doesn’t answer her for long moments where she wonders if her attempts at gentle have fallen flat as they always do. 

Anders takes a deep shuddering breath. “And...” he says painfully slow, “the woman I’ve been in love with for seven years.”

Hawke can’t help the tension that takes over her muscles, or the way her fingers lock on his wrists. “Anders...” she breathes.

“No,” he says firmly. “No, you weren’t to know, I made certain you were never to know. Do not think you have been hurting me by not noticing. I didn’t want you to notice.”

The sob wells up in her throat before she can stop herself, and she shakes a little with the force of holding back. “Anders,” she chokes out, because he’s her best friend, closer than even Varric, and she’s told him everything - from the details of her first night with Fenris, to the bone aching loneliness of the many nights that followed that one - and he’d been in love with her the whole time.

“Stop, Minna, please,” he begs, voice cracking. “This isn’t a goodbye, it’s... it’s a ‘I’ll see you soon’, don’t mourn me before I’m in my grave.” The joke falls flat but she snorts anyway.

He stands with her help, and she levers herself to her feet with a clank. “Come on,” she says hoarsely. “We shouldn’t... Keep them waiting.”

They walk together, hands brushing but not touching and some of the tension in Fenris’ face eases when he sees them thus. “Here, Healer Anders, lay there.” Marethari steps into their line of vision and leads Anders to a cot. “I will cast Sleep upon you to make the transition easier for you, and then I will cast the spell.”

Anders nods trustingly and lays down on the cot. He glances around the aravel at each of his companions. “Will you pass on my regards to the others... if this doesn’t work?”

Hawke tries to give him a reassuring smile. “You’ll tell them yourself, alright?”

His amber eyes go distressingly flat and Anders reaches out for Hawke’s hand again. “Elf–Fenris. I’m going to do something you’ll hate me for later.”

Fenris snorts, but his face is calm. “I already hate you, mage, so you cannot do more to earn my ire.”

So Anders uses Hawke’s hand to pull her down to his level. “Do not forget me,” he commands with a telling crack in his voice. 

And then he kisses her.

It’s not that she hasn’t thought about it before, if she’s being honest. Anders is hardly unattractive and with his bearing and his eyes and his Maker-be-damned voice but he had never seemed interested and he’d been so broken up about Karl that Minna just hadn’t bothered. No use searching out heartbreak - which she had ended up doing anyway. 

Anders kisses like he does everything else - with his whole being. His free hand curls around the back of her head, threading through her cropped hair, tugging her ever closer. He makes an unconsciously broken noise against her parted lips when she kisses back, trying to keep it gentle and kind rather than the passionate crush he’d started with.

She can feel Fenris’ rising irritation behind her, but he says nothing and does less, letting Anders have his moment. The surge of love she feels for her tattooed elf is strong and all encompassing, as Anders lets her pull away. His whiskey eyes are wet and he presses his nose to her cheek. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

That is when Marethari casts her Sleep spell over him, and he slumps in Hawke’s arms for the second or third time that day. “We should begin,” she says evenly, and Hawke has no time to look at Fenris and gauge his reaction to Anders overstepping. 

The whole world vanishes with a twist and Hawke stands alone in the Fade.

* 

 

The Fade rumbles around her, like her angry Mabari, left behind to guard Merrill’s small home. It sounds like the Arishok charging her from behind and she whirls in place, drawing her Templar’s blade. “You will not catch me so easily, _Hawke_ ” a voice hisses angrily, her name a curse on the magic scented air.

“Come out where I can see you, Justice, and fight me with honor!” she shouts back, 

There’s a frighteningly sibilant laugh, and Justice replies, “did you not name me the demon of Vengeance? What honor have I left?”

“It doesn’t have to happen this way,” she offers him, even though they both know it probably does. She doesn’t know any other way to be, it’s fight or feud and her silver tongue only does so much good.

“It does,” Justice says, from everywhere. “I’m too far gone to change what I am now. The Mages will have justice, and then they will have their revenge.”

“Maker damn you,” Hawke shrieks. “Face me, you coward!” She spins slowly in place, turning her blade this way and that, just in case.

Out of the silvery mist that surrounds the strange clearly she was in, steps Anders. It isn’t the lyrium broken shell he’d been the last time she visited the Fade with him, but a full representation of him.

“Minna,” he says, sounding so warm and alive that she takes an involuntary step in his direction. “Minna, be careful, please. Justice cannot be trusted.”

She gives him a dirty look. “Thank you Anders, I hadn’t figured.” 

Anders laughs, looking young and gorgeous and Hawke’s breath catches. “He is everywhere and he is angry. There isn’t a way to kill him, not here, where he is strongest. But you can pull me away from him.”

Hawke scowls. She hates Fade talk, and hates crypticness even more. “Then how?”

“You can take me with you,” Anders purrs, and his whiskey eyes shine purple.

Snarling, Hawke slams her blade into not-Anders chest, pulling it out only when the desire demon falls to the ground. “You’ll have to do better than that!” she roars out as a challenge.

“Hawke!” She whirls again and slams into Fenris who steadies her with warm hands. “Have you found Merrill?” he asks urgently. 

She draws back sharply, shoving at him with her sharp shoulder pauldron. “Get away from me, spirit. This form will not work either!”

Fenris frowns, looking wounded. “Hawke?” he asks cautiously, holding out his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I am myself, as I have ever been.”

Hawke snarls, gesturing emphatically with her blade. “You called her Merrill! The Fenris I know wouldn’t ever use her name, he’d call her witch! So go away, get! I already killed your partner, you’ll have no part of me here.”

“Killed my part– Hawke. You think I am a demon.” Fenris holds out his hands again, his sword reassuringly still strapped to his back. “How can I prove this is not the case?”

“You can’t,” she says harshly. “This is the Fade, and I can trust nothing.”

Fenris drops to his knees before without pause. “I am yours,” he whispers. “Do as you will.”

Her breath catches in her throat. “We have a demon to find. Come on.”

Together they venture into the mist, Hawke following some unknown instinct inside of her. She has no true connection to Anders, not in any way that matters or counts but she is her father’s daughter and she knows when to trust her gut. “We still have to find Merrill,” Fenris reminds her.

“Seriously, stop calling her that,” Hawke says sharply.

When Hawke glances behind her where Fenris stands, he looks amused. “I’ll remind you of this conversation when I start calling her witch again.”

“I’d really prefer it if you didn’t,” Merrill says, stepping out from a behind a tree. “Varric always says that those are your versions of endearments but I don’t feel very endeared when you say it with such anger.”

Fenris just shrugs. “Better than some things I could call you.”

Merrill visibly thinks about it for a moment before sighing lightly. “I suppose you’re right. Come, this way.”

Hawke follows her without hesitation. “Oh of course,” Fenris says with a long suffering sigh. “Her, you follow without question.”

Managing to find a grin from somewhere, Hawke shoots Fenris a look over her shoulder. “She’s a mage. She at least, knows what she’s doing.”

“Come along, come along, I don’t think I’ll be able to find you any string if you get lost!” Merrill chastises gently, but ushers them down a narrowing path to a stone sarcophagus surrounded by a grove of trees. Anders lay on top of it, breathing shallowly. “It is good you brought Fenris, Hawke,” Merrill says quietly. “For even in the Fade, Justice lives within Anders now. The only way to remove him is to pull him out.”

Fenris glances down at his lyrium branded hands. “And I could do this thing?”

“Yes,” Merrill says with certainty. “I put Justice to sleep because he thought I was the weakest one, that he could drive me and my knowledge away by killing me first.” Her bow shaped lips curl up in a smug smile. “It is a very good thing Anders has always underestimated me and my abilties, no?”

Hawke stares down at his sleeping figure. “Then what?”

“Then I’ll Will us back to Marethari’s aravel, and we’ll access the damage done to Anders there,” Merrill says simply. “But we are running out of time, Fenris. Please.”

It doesn’t take much more convincing than that. With nary a look to Hawke, Fenris steps up to the sleeping mage and growls, “This is for kissing her,” and plunges his hand inside Anders chest.

The screaming, when it starts, is inhuman. It rolls through the twisted grove, bursting through them with sound and ice alike. Fenris takes one step backwards, then another, and another, pulling the kicking and screaming Fade form of Justice from Ander’s chest. Ice builds up on his arm where he holds Justice, but Fenris does not release his grip.

“No, no, no, no!” Justice howls, fighting tooth and claw. “He is mine!”

Fenris’ lip curls and he tightens his grip. “He is not a slave.”

And then Justice is free of Anders, and Merrill snags the shade Justice left behind in a crushing prison powerful enough that even the Fade bends around it’s bars. “Marethari!” Merrill shrieks as Justice breaks through the spell, and then —

— Hawke sits up with a cry. “Easy, be easy,” Marethari soothes. “You are safe, your friends are safe and Justice is gone. Healer Anders is abomination free, just as you promised him.”

She scrambles out of her own cot, falling to her knees beside Anders. “Anders! Anders, blight take you, open your eyes, please!” she begs. He groans - a familiar sound - and opens refreshingly amber eyes to scowl at her. “Oh thank the Maker,” she breathes, and throws her arms around him.

He hesitates before patting her gently on the shoulder. “Um, of course I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?” he says, sounding confused. She pulls away to look him full in the face and he smiles roguishly. “Your eyes are the loveliest shade of blue,” he comments slyly. “But um... who are you?”

*

Epilogue

*

“I just can’t believe it’s been seven years since I was in Amaranthine,” he says to the figure behind him. “And that the reason I gave that woman was that they took my cat.” Anders eyes go wide and he whirls around. “My cat!”

“He is fine, my friend,” Zevran says, with a low laugh. “Nadia keeps him quite safe and pampered.”

Anders huffs. “And no one thought to come look for me?”

The Antivan hesitates uncharacteristically. “Well... You made yourself quite clear, my friend, when you left. You had quite the fight with our Warden, yes? Stormed out of Vigil’s Keep. She did... not approve of your taking Justice.”

“And right she was,” Anders murmurs sadly. “Seven years, and I remember nothing. Zev, that woman, the Hawke, she looked so...”

Zevran puts his arm around Anders waist. “Ah my friend, you cannot be two places at once, no? If you do not wish to take up the lovely Isabela’s offer for a ride back to Amaranthine, then you may stay as you like.”

He thinks for a long moment, staring out over the water. “I don’t know,” he says when the silence draws on too long. “Why are you even here?”

Poking the mage in the side, Zevran sighs dramatically. “It is a grand tale, I think! The Crows, they grew so very bold in your absence, tracking me night and day and being very, very disruptive. You know how our Warden gets when she is interrupted, my friend. I said, I will deal with this, and my search brought me here.”

“Is that where you met Hawke?” Ander asks, leaning back against Zevran’s bulk.

“Mm,” Zevran agrees. “Silly stupid Nuncio brought her into it, told her the most outrageous lies about myself. She came after me and listened to my story and decided that perhaps I was much more useful to her than I would be dead. Much like our Warden.”

Anders smirks. “They’re related.”

“I am unsurprised,” Zevran announces. “She helps me kill Nuncio, so of course I offered her something from me, and her tall, dark and brooding elf nearly ran me through after he went to all that trouble to save me.”

“I’m sure Nadia would have been so pleased that you seduced her cousin,” Anders adds drily. 

“Ah, that is not the point.” Zevran presses a warm kiss to Anders’ shoulder. “I stuck around, just in case, you understand. Isabela was here, and she is more than enough of a distraction for me.”

Anders laughs softly. “Should I be jealous?”

Poking him again, Zevran shakes his head. “I will return with you, should you decide to return to Amaranthine. If you decide to stay, I will also stay with you.” 

Staring out over the cool blue water, the sunset causing ripples of orange in the waves, Anders shakes his head. “No... I remember nothing of these people and they... deserve someone who does. I will return to Vigil’s Keep.”

To his credit, Zevran doesn’t ask him if he is certain. He instead tightens his grip on Anders’ waist. “As you wish, mi amado.” 

The assassin leaves him there in order to find Isabela. Anders stays where he is, standing by the edge of the water in the docks district of Kirkwall. Despite it’s rather lackluster reputation, he is left alone to his thoughts, coming out of his daze only when Zevran points out Isabela’s ship.

He does not think of Hawke again.

*end


End file.
